


Peace Isn't Quiet

by gloss



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Femslash12, Post-Canon, hc_bingo: atonement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 05:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're the worst kismeses, ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Peace Isn't Quiet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mattecat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mattecat/gifts).



> Post-Sburb, post-Scratch, post-canon, post-everything. Title from Throwing Muses, "Status Quo". Thanks as ever to G. for brainstorm and (lightning fast) beta.

They're all going to die!

They were all going to die (all over again) if this noise kept up. They were going to _kill each other_ to get away from the racket.

The banging had resumed early that morning. It was too arrhythmic to be mechanical, though it was certainly metallic, clangs and clashes alternating with eerie, high-pitched chimes. It floated up through the vents and snagged on the ceilings, rebounded and redoubled, overtook their every sense.

"Sounds like the inside of my head," Karkat said, hunching his shoulders up around his ears and glaring at the floor.

"You, too?" Roxy embraced him one-armed and smooched the tip of one horn. This drove Karkat deeper, tortoise-like, into the neck of his sweater. "Like the worstest hangover ever-ever, right?"

"You're entirely too cheerful about this," Rose remarked without looking up from her book. She turned the page, then added, "Jade, can't you take care of this?"

"Yeah, Harley," Karkat said. "Fix it. That's an order."

Startled, Jade dropped her bowl, slopping cereal and milk all over her feet. "What am I supposed to do?" She retrieved the dripping bowl. "What the hell, Karkat? I don't take orders from you."

"Nobody does," Rose said serenely.

"Maybe just get it turned down?" Roxy smiled sweetly, miming a dial turning. "Just an eensy-weensy huge-ass oh god please save us you're our only hope?"

"Can I have breakfast first?" Jade regarded the sodden Squiddles Puffs on the floor, their bright colours bleeding into the milk. In death, everything swells and blanches.

"No time!" Karkat pushed her towards the door. "Get it done! It's all on you!"

*

After changing her sneakers, Jade made her way down to the sub-sub-sub-basement. Right to the heart of this crashed spaceship, where Dirk has his workshop set up around the ship's engines and quantum drives. The noise was so much worse, louder and _deeper_ , down here. What she's come to think of as her Becness, swirls and layers of his qualities mixed with her own, rebelled against going nearer; her ears were in agony.

Shirtless, torch in one hand, Dirk was working at one bench. He seemed entirely undisturbed by the racket. He just jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the back of the workshop, before returning to his project.

Raised by a corpse, Jade grew up among mummies and robots and stuffed busts. She ought to be comfortable with the lifeless and the para-living and all the slippery, foggy grey zones between life and death. Dirk's workshop, however, skeeved her out. Cluttered with robot limbs, eyeless heads, headless eyes, digits without hands, it was a charnel house of the mechanical.

Everything she hated about this place was what drew Nepeta here.

She picked her way to the back, to the source of the noise.

Nepeta sat cross-legged, facing the corner, whaling away on a robot torso with a robot leg. Her arm must have been _killing_ her, even if you compensated for trolls' superior strength and stamina. She'd been banging for hours today, and more hours yesterday.

Most nights, Nepeta curled up at the foot of Jade's bed. She snuck in after Jade was asleep and was gone before she woke. Last night, however, Jade had stayed awake. There had been no sign of Nepeta.

Looking at her now, hat askew, coat more wrinkled than ever and twisted around her waist, it was clear that she'd slept down here.

Jade kicked Nepeta's lower back, waited, then did it again.

"Go away," Nepeta said, but at least she stopped banging. The noise continued to resound, however, in Jade's ears and, indeed, in the marrow of her bones.

She dropped down to a crouch and pushed Nepeta's shoulder lightly. "No."

"Go away, Jade."

"Nope."

Nepeta was staring fixedly down into her lap, where a pair of Equius's glasses rested in the folds of her coat. She lifted her upper lip in a soft _hiss_. Jade poked her again and _woofed_ slightly.

Nepeta's lashes fluttered and she drew herself up a little straighter, turning to look at Jade. She hissed again, her gaze steady, eyes gold and lambent.

"Woof!" Jade said amiably, dropping all the way to the floor and pulling herself into the small space between Nepeta and the wall. "Yip, woof, and so on."

Nepeta flexed her claws around the hunk of metal in her hand. "How'd you find me?"

"Superior canine tracking abilities!" Jade replied. "Also, you're making a fuck of a lot of noise."

Nepeta looked like she was trying not to smile. "Just leave me alone, okay?"

"Not okay. Not leaving you alone." Jade cleared her throat and tried to channel a fragment of Karkat's anger. "Deal with it."

Nepeta showed her teeth before muttering, "No, _you_ deal with it."

Jade punched her arm; Nepeta hissed sharply and twisted around to pounce. There wasn't quite enough space, however, and she banged her head on a low-hanging pipe while Jade yelped and slid down onto her back. Nepeta landed half-on, half-off her, claws on Jade's shoulders, fangs at her chin. Her weight, sliding and awkward as it was, was still familiar and welcome, somehow reassuring and just right.

Jade arched her back a little and licked Nepeta's cheek. It made her almost-smile, so she did it again, and again, until Nepeta was whimpering in protest and squirming.

"And you call yourselves kismeses?" Dirk stood above them, mopping sweat from his face.

Jade flipped him off and tried to firm up her hold on Nepeta.

"You two really are the worst at this," he continued. "Are you even trying?"

Jade wrinkled her nose at him. "We're _awesome_ at this. Check it out. Hey, Nepeta, I hate your, your. Cute kitty-ness! And stupid tail and I wish you'd just -- go somewhere else and be quiet!"

Nepeta nuzzled Jade's neck for a moment. "Yeah, what you said. Also you smell funny and your hair is stupid."

"Pathetic." Dirk sounded fond and amused and somehow superior, like he always did. The twist to his lips, the deliberately dispassionate tone, it all made Jade feel Dave's loss all over again. "Put a little heat into it, at least."

"What do you know about romance?" Nepeta pushed herself up on one hand, banging her head on the same pipe. "Ow, ow, _shitfuck_."

Wincing in sympathy, Jade kissed the bump, just before her horn. Nepeta pushed into the kiss, rubbing her forehead against Jade's jaw and neck.

"Know enough," Dirk said, slinging the towel over his bare shoulder and turning away.

"Everything you know came from TV and the Internet!" Jade called after him.

"Takes one to know one," he replied without turning or slowing down.

"Damn it," she said.

Nepeta giggled. "You lose."

*

She didn't know what set Nepeta off this time. These days, the status quo was survival, which had turned out to be a hell of a lot less valuable than anyone could have dreamed. Mostly, it just meant more time to miss your friends.

They were all broken and agitated. Their ship had crashed Basalt and permafrost outside, steel and damp recycled air inside.

Nepeta's skin was gray, too, but it was a limber, beautiful shade, its undertones sometimes lavender, sometimes spruce-green. To Jade's touch -- her hot, sticky-fingered touch, or so Nepeta claimed -- troll skin felt almost rubbery, pliable, stretched across the plates and bones of their endoskeletons.

"Let's go eat," Jade said, grasping Nepeta's hand to help her up. She wasn't going to let go.

"Let's not," Nepeta said, stowing Equius's glasses in an inner pocket.

"You need to eat."

"You need to shut up." Nepeta hip-checked her to emphasize the point. "You're not my moirail."

Jade tried not to react visibly to that. "I'll shut up if you eat. Simple." She squeezed Nepeta's hand.

"Stupid bargain."

"You're stupid."

"This is stupid."

"Also true."

They picked their way past Dirk, through the mounds and heaps and dangling stalactites of parts and limbs, circuit boards and cybernetic spines, out onto a mezzanine deck, then started climbing the stairs. Right after they crashed, the top of the wreck was open to the elements, and light had filtered in long, pale silver rays all the way down here. They had long since patched up the holes, but sometimes, maybe thanks to Bec, Jade still sensed their presence.

"Hurry up," Nepeta said from several steps ahead. Trolls moved fast and elegantly; Jade always felt like a lumbering oaf next to -- really, _behind_ \-- them. "Slowpoke."

"Freak," she called back and tried to hasten her pace.

Jade had not taken easily to this. Whatever _this_ was, a parody of or a tribute to the blackest quadrant. Cruelty, she believed, would always believe, was never necessary.

But this wasn't cruelty, not how she did it, not how Nepeta needed it. Rose theorized that kismesitude codified confrontation, made it socially acceptable and less dangerous. Then it started to make sense.

Jade still sucked at it.

She'd apologize to Nepeta, if that were possible, but it wasn't.

What _was_ possible was actually a lot simpler: quickening her step so she could grab the hem of Nepeta's coat, barking loudly, holding on.


End file.
